Great outdoor lighting provides your home entryway with a welcoming and luxuriant presentation, ensuring just the right level of illumination for the safety and security of visitors and guests. 

Now is the time to assess your property and invest in a custom outdoor lighting design to increase your home’s curb appeal and provide a luminous finish to your home entrance.

New innovations include outdoor post lamps, decorative lanterns and energy-efficient pathway lighting.

To make your nighttime outdoor environment as comfortable, safe, and maintenance-free as possible, great lighting is key.

1.  SECURITY LIGHTING FOR WALKWAYS AND DRIVEWAYS.

Outdoor post lamps and path lighting help to expand your outdoor environment, providing a tailor-made illumination toward the front door, deck, patio +/or garage.

2. DECORATIVE LIGHTING FOR HOME ENRTY ZONES.

An outdoor hanging lamp and/or wall lanterns add a customized finish and are available in a myriad of styles to complement homes from traditional to ultra modern.

3.  TASK LIGHT BY THE FRONT DOOR AND GARAGE.

Direct focused illumination on key holes and security pads should be bright enough to allow for easy access and visibility when you are entering and leaving your home at night.

4.  ACCENT ILLUMINATION TO HIGHLIGHT HOUSE NUMBERS

Make sure that your home is properly illuminated for guests as well as delivery people and emergency vehicles.  All too often, help is delayed in emergency situations because house numbers are not clearly visible at night and outdoor lighting is insufficient.

5.  “SHIELDED” LAMPS THAT EXPAND OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE AND ACCENTUATE IMPORTANT ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES.

Properly shielded outdoor lighting fixtures expand and beautify your home, without creating glare or causing visual discomfort to visitors and neighbors. A good lighting design with energy-efficient fixtures will increase the value of your property and provide majestic outdoor lighting effects.

LET’S GET STARTED…

*Rule of thumb for sizing outdoor wall lanterns:  The height of the lantern should be based on the height of the door.  If brackets are to be installed on either side of the door, they should measure about one-fourth the height of the door.  If using only one lantern, size up to about one-third the height of the door.

** “Dark Sky” compliancy and light pollution:  Light pollution is any undesirable effect of artificial light, including glare, light trespass and decreased visibility at night.  Many manufacturers offer “Dark Sky” versions of their outdoor lighting products, which “collar” the light bulb around its base to block superfluous upward emissions of light.

-Match outdoor fixture styles to the decor of your interior space.  Whether you go with classic and elegant traditional outdoor lighting or sleek and contemporary, your outdoor post lamps, hanging lamps and wall lighting should complement that style.

-If you have custom designed hardware on doors, find a finish that will work well to complement this detail.

-Don’t neglect the side yard and dark areas by side windows;  Include at least one low-level outdoor lamp for nighttime security.

-Look for finishes and outdoor hanging lanterns, post lamps and flush fixtures that are guaranteed to last.  Check out warranty information on the latest outdoor lighting fixtures; some include a life-time guarantee on all finishes and parts.

-Make sure to view your outdoor lighting after dark before signing off on a project; make necessary adjustments to refine your outdoor lighting design, focusing the light exactly where it is needed for an aesthetically pleasing look and polished illumination for safe navigation and security lighting at night.

Capitol Lighting’s professional lighting consultants will help you in selecting everything from timers and outdoor hanging lamps to path lights and outdoor post lamps.  Work with the experts to prepare your outdoor environment with quality lighting customized to enhance the value of your home.

From traditional outdoor lighting to modern and classic contemporary designs, the right outdoor lamps make a world of difference.  Beautify your home and secure the neighborhood with updated outdoor lighting fixtures to highlight your home with good sense and style.

Top Picks include:

New Traditional Outdoor Lighting from Hinkley Lighting:

“Mendocino” Outdoor Post Lamp from Troy Lighting:

Outdoor Hanging Lamp from Fine Art Lamps:

Dark-Sky Compliant Outdoor Lamps from Minka Lavery:

It’s easy to believe that homes without security systems are must more likely to be targeted by a burglar that ones that are equipped with an efficient home security system. Many times, the simple presence of an alarm system can be enough to protect your home and your family from a break-in.

There are occasions in which a burglar will enter a home without knowing whether or not there are actually any occupants inside or not. This can quickly escalate to a dangerous situation. If this is not enough to convince you to have a burglar alarm installed, keep reading for some more benefits.

This is particularly pertinent if you have children who are old enough to stay home alone, or elderly members of your family. Reaction times may not allow them to get out of a home with the speed required in dangerous situations, and although a forceful burglary may never happen, your family will at least have a peace of mind that there is something there to deter thieves.

In addition to protecting your family, an efficient burglar alarm helps to protect your valuables. When your alarm system is enabled, it will not only set off an audible signal, it will also alert authorities that the home has been broken into. This increases the likelihood that the burglar will be caught or identified later for the crime committed.

As all homeowners know, having insurance on their home is mandatory. This type of insurance policy covers private residences and the possessions within from loss, or damage that can occur as the result of a number of events, burglary being one. However, if you have an alarm then you’ve reduced the risk that you will be robbed, and therefore most insurance companies will provide a discount for homeowners insurance.

Thanks to smart devices, home security systems these days allow you to view your home using a web cam. Most systems also allow you to remotely arm and disarm the home, monitor multiple cameras, and even turn lights on and off and control your HVAC system.

An important component in your main electrical service panel is commonly known as the breaker. If you’re a homeowner, surely you have visited yours a few times over the years. But what exactly is it? And what does it do? Let’s go over the importance of the breaker and what its doing for your home.

If you read our article on the home electrical system a few months back, you will know which step the service panel comes in receiving electricity for your home. The service panel is the gateway for all electricity in your home. After electricity comes through underground or overhead power lines, it goes to your electrical meter and then to the service panel. Electricity branches off from here and travels to the rest of your home. Within the panel are circuits for different areas for electricity to travel. Shutting down a circuit can cause power loss to a part of the home, maybe a room or two. But because the home is on many different circuits, power can remain active in the rest of the house.

After electricity arrives at the service panel, it travels to a circuit. The circuit is a loop in which electricity travels from one end to the other. The breaker splits up to 100 amps or more into the circuits to distribute the power. Usually each circuit in a common residential home operates at 15 amps. The breaker is designed to “trip” if it receives an excess of electricity. If a power surge occurs on the outside of the home, for example a lightning strike, the service panel will stop the flow and turn off. If a surge happens on a circuit within your home, the breaker will also shut down that loop to protect the rest of the house.

Over time if work on a service panel is not completed correctly, the circuits could blow more frequently due to overloading. Parts in the panel can become outdated, loosen, or get burned out. If a service panel is not maintained and up to code, it also poses specific risks, making your home more susceptible to fires and electrical surges.

The future of electricity production in the United States is very much in flux. When President Obama introduced his Clean Power Plan, it was an indication that the days of fossil fuel dominance could be on the wane. If coal, oil and natural gas are on their way out as the nation's primary energy sources, however, what will fill the void?

The Game-Changing Energy Option

Renewable resource technologies like wind and solar are an option, or perhaps a resurgence of nuclear fission energy could fill the space left by fossil fuels. There is another dark horse in the market, though – a technology that has long teased cheap, clean fuel but to this day has not yet delivered: nuclear fusion. Although fusion has so far failed to live up to its rosy promises, some analysts believe it could reach the U.S. market in a decade and change the way we power our electrical work forever.

Big names like Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Microsoft and others are all working on or sponsoring various fusion projects that at least have a chance to go commercial. The potential payoff is simply too big to ignore. A functional fusion generator could create power without burning fossil fuels or creating harmful emissions or waste, with no danger of meltdown and at a far greater efficiency than wind or solar. We could power the entire country's electrical work in a green, inexpensive manner.

How Fusion Works

In a way, fusion is already the most common source of energy on Earth – it's how the sun produces the heat and light that help sustain life on our planet. Fusion in the sun occurs when the nuclei of hydrogen atoms bond together to make helium. Humans have been trying for decades to create a similar power source here on Earth, on a much smaller scale, but so far without success. As one popular saying tells us, fusion power is thirty years in the future, and always will be.

However, researchers and entrepreneurs aren't willing to throw in the towel. Scientists are trying to create fusion using other fuels, like deuterium oxide, of which a single gram can create enough energy to power a home's electrical work for a year. The problem is, to create fusion on Earth, we need to create extremely high temperatures (think 100 million degrees Celsius) and don't currently have a way to do it without consuming far more energy than we create.

New Technology Leading the Way

The firms working on fusion today are breaking out new technologies, pumping gas into vacuum chambers to create plasma and bombarding it with microwaves to raise the temperature. Whether anyone can make the process viable in a cost-effective and large-scale way is yet to be seen.

Fusion could be just around the corner, or it could still be a long ways off. In the meantime, if you want to learn about cheaper or more efficient ways to power your home electrical work today, call an expert electrician who can lay out the options available in your area.

How old is your home? Has your electrical system been updated within the last 5 – 10 years? If you haven’t asked these questions recently, it’s probably time to examine your options! Older homes with older electrical systems aren’t typically able to handle the stress of modern electrical appliances. So what can you do to make sure your home can safely run all of your appliances and electronics? Typically, a heavy up can be the answer to your problems. But should you install one? Let the experts at Kolb Electric answer!

A heavy up is an increase in the amperage (power) of your main electrical service. But how can you know if your home is in need of an increase of amperage? There are some things you can check to make sure you’re in need:

Depending on your specific goals, you have a range of upgrades available when thinking about a heavy up. Some service upgrades are as simple as adding a few additional circuit breakers to the existing box, or expanding the box with a subpanel. More complex upgrades may include things like replacing a fuse box or an aging panel with one that allows for higher energy capacity. A Kolb Electrician can evaluate the condition of your current panel with any problems you are experiencing to determine how extensive your upgrades will be.

The time depends on the job. Adding additional breakers to an existing panel is usually pretty quick, often taking less than an hour. Installing a subpanel is not too complicated either, often taking no more than a few hours.

Where it starts to take a long time is when you need to make serious upgrades. If you need to replace a fuse box or circuit main, you could be looking at a job that takes all day.